


Crossroads

by commanderpyre



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Post-Episode: s02e17 The Honorable Ones, Pre-Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, Self-Acceptance, Self-Reflection, i have no idea how to tag this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23352340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commanderpyre/pseuds/commanderpyre
Summary: Agent Kallus going home and rethinking his life after Bahryn.
Relationships: Alexsandr Kallus & Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios
Comments: 20
Kudos: 107





	Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> The tags are severely lacking in post Honorable Ones Kallus reflection, probably because its quite a heavy topic so I hope I did it some justice.
> 
> Semi inspired by Elle's art on Twitter, copy and paste the link to see it.  
> > https://twitter.com/elleTchi/status/1241824402104352773?s=20

They peered out into a more peaceful part of the Galaxy, he knew, but could not see. The vastness of space was invigorating, it often alleviated the gnawing claustrophobia he felt in stressful times such as this; but there were no windows in his quarters. Nowhere for the starlight to seep in, to calm him, nothing to guide him from dullness toward a prettier view, and toward prettier thoughts… Agent Kallus sat on his bunk, rough palms cradling his head and strained fingers carding through blonde hair. Mind racing.

Visions of his past drenched with dirt and crimson toyed with him. Lasan, Onderon, even ones as far back as his mess of a childhood on Coruscant. These memories had accompanied Kallus for years. Usually he could deal with them, but his perception of everything had shifted, jarringly so. They haunted Kallus for new reasons, and in new, horrific ways. When awake, they’d burden him like heavy, tainted armor upon his broad shoulders. And in dream, they’d forever torment.

It was silent. Yet sharp blaster bolts bombarded Kallus’ ears. His mind forced him to re-live every kill he’d ever made in the name of the Empire. And he shook and shivered and tensed in revulsion. Guilt clawed at his insides, coiled in his lungs like smoke, and Kallus was struggling to breathe through it.

Blood coating his hands stained all he touched. Kallus could almost feel its thickness. A layer for every sin. Feel how it was crusted over in age; the worst of his wrongdoings long buried in time’s overflowing archives.

Kallus scratched at his scalp in desperation. A futile attempt to eradicate it. The red, the feeling… He wanted to coarse his nails down his body until these delusional sights and sensations faded, until the red was gone, and the pale freckled flesh beneath was again visible.

The scent aboard the Star Destroyer was a sterile, artificial one, mimicking the freshness of being planet-side. It smelled clean, much like the cream he’d been using to sooth his injured leg. And although Kallus shared it’s scents and it’s cleanliness, he could never be as pristine. No matter how hard he would try from now on, for him to be clean, truly _clean,_ was an insurmountable feat… Wasn’t it?

This is the turmoil he had stewed in all night, and every night in the past few rotations. This is where he had sat. Unmoving. Frozen stiff. Fear terrorized Kallus, amongst other things. The fear of what came next. If it weren’t for this inability to move, the insomnia, and the endless stream of disturbing thoughts, Kallus would be a pool of melting nothingness upon the very floor he could not break gaze from.

He never cared to switch on a light. Most of his quarters were cast in shadows of blue and black; ironic, he scoffed. How this place, Kallus’ personal retreat, had once offered him mild comfort and solace away from the chaos of his coworkers. How it shared the same tones as the bruising around his knee where his leg was broken. It hurt the same too. Made him ache. The Empire was to Kallus as a fresh blemish was to his body. Soon, a deeper wound would fester in it’s place. Over time, this scar would fade, perhaps as Garazeb had claimed he’d moved past what happened on Lasan; that’s all Kallus could hope.

As drab and as painful as it was, the place had been Kallus’ home for years. His quarters were sparsely decorated and he’d always preferred them this way, it meant less distractions. It also allowed him to escape from everything, even himself. Maybe this was one reason it’d taken him so long to _see._

He recalled the _Ghost_ as it had landed on Bahryn. Even amidst the icy blizzards of a frozen moon it’s colours were vibrant. The exterior was mostly a flat gray; though hints of oranges and greens, and Sabine Wren’s artwork made it not just unique but… A home, as it should be. Kallus’ barren room now highlighted how impersonal everything about the Empire was. He recalled how warmly Zeb had been received by his Rebels, his family. Compared it to the coldness of his own return… Konstantine had not cared enough to look Kallus in the eye. Perhaps he never even noticed Kallus’ absence.

Kallus could not refrain from mentally cataloging the times in which he’d failed to recognize the Empire for what he now knew it was. The count was frighteningly high, and sent another wave of paranoia crashing over him. _What else had he missed? What else was he wrong about?_

A part of him wished he could revert to before now, before Bahryn. Wished he had remained in the dark where all was fine. But Kallus stopped those thoughts in their tracks. Because he knew, that ignorance, darkness, could never be fine; and the ‘fine’ he thought the Empire was didn’t exist. It was a room, like his quarters, where the light was shut off. If that light so much as flickered, the hidden reality would be exposed. And it had been. With no more than his honest words, Zeb had planted the seeds of doubt in Kallus mind; seeds that sprouted and had not let him rest. Zeb had him guided toward the switch, and Kallus had flicked it.

From this point forward, Kallus’ reality was, that he owed his life to Zeb. The gratitude he held for his former enemy was unprecedented; whether he had the strength to address this feeling yet or not, it existed…

Onderon was where Kallus had lost most people who he’d have called friends here. And it was so long ago now. It was also where he’d broken his leg for the first time. The same leg that had been re-broken on Bahryn. Kallus’ brows furrowed in thought. It felt like a sign of some-kind. The Galaxy’s way of waking him the kriff up from the nightmare he’d been living.

A strange sense of disconnectedness overcame him. Kallus had been without bunk mates since around the time of Onderon. At the time, he’d been proud; it was a privilege earned by the Empire’s most trusted and proficient officers. It wasn’t until these past few rotations when he found himself missing Zebs company that Kallus realised just how isolated he’d been all these years. He missed _any_ form of meaningful company. Spending a night with the Lasat had opened Kallus’ eyes in more ways than one, and it’d reminded him what a real kriffing conversation was like. He didn’t even know he’d needed that. And _how_ didn’t he? Was he really so removed from himself?

Without properly registering what he was doing, Kallus reached for a little wooden box beneath his bed. It was one of the few personal items Kallus had brought with him from Coruscant; once belonging to his mother. Kallus barely remembered her, and the majority of memories he did have, he hated. He’d known that she’d meant well, though, and had cared for him more than his father ever did… Engraved into the lid were moons and stars painted in shimmering silvers. On the base of it was the mark of a well known, expensive store located somewhere in the core. And beside that, her initials.

Kallus gripped it tight. Felt the warmth from within leaking out. The growing heat brought him back to the moment. Kallus stopped. Hesitated. His hand hovered over the latch for a few seconds as he braced himself. Then, he opened it.

Inside was an old holo-image from his time at the Imperial Academy on Coruscant, his fathers old ring, and a few pieces of fabric and string that once decorated the Bo-Rifle he owned.When modifying it,Kallus had taken it all off, feeling it wasn’t his place to use it in it’s traditional state. But the source of the heat, and his anxiousness, was the meteorite.

Instead of leaving the glowing rock to burn out on that ice moon, he’d kept it. Kallus couldn’t explain why he’d felt compelled to, but he had.

On the first night back in his own bunk, he’d slept with the meteorite by his side. Couldn’t bear to be parted from it. Come morning, embarrassment swamped Kallus. He’d felt a fool as his attitude toward everything began to change, and he hid it away in this box with all his other memories; out of sight, out of mind. The third day back in the Empire after his encounter with Zeb was the day Kallus could no longer ignore what’d happened. He’d dug and dug for information as the Lasat had advised him to, and the more Kallus dug the more he’d grown to despise everything he’d ever known and done. It was by no coincidence this was when Ahsoka Tano had contacted him, when Kallus had clutched the meteor so tightly he’d cut his hand along it’s jagged hot edges. Trying to contain a fit of panic and anger and sorrow, Kallus had squeezed the rock until a tiny part of it had broken off.

In the span of a few short rotations, this meteorite had become both the most sentimental and the most loathed thing in Kallus’ possession.

As Kallus lifted it gently out, cupped it tenderly, it bathed him in golden hues; celestial energy caressing freckled skin. His hands were trembling, afraid that he would again break it, like he had left so many lives across the Galaxy fractured. The soft glow refracted through loose strands of hair that fall over his face, illuminating the watery hazel of his wide eyed stare. Kallus held the meteor as if he would a child.

An idea came to him then.

The small fragment that’d broken off was like a gem. A beautiful, crystalline amber, that faded into a white rocky base. Somehow, it still glowed warm and bright. Kallus reached for it, then for one of the pieces of string taken from the Bo-Rifle. Kallus had won the weapon in battle from a Lasat named Tiyberrios, but beyond that, he knew nothing. No amount of research had enlightened him as to why it was decorated in fabric. Kallus had come to believe they were trophies, representing something, and he’d noticed on his very first fight with Zeb that he had something similar wrapped around his. This was just an assumption, of course, and Kallus couldn’t be sure. But the string was a reminder of Lasan, just as the meteorite was of Bahryn, and Zeb.

A few cracks in the gem allowed for Kallus to easily thread the string through it, creating a pendant.

With a sharp intake of breath, he tied it around his neck. Closed his eyes. Succumbed to the darkness of his inner-self, let the pendant protect him from it, free him. Let its brightness blanket him and its warmth eradicate his coldness. It was a warmth to match Zeb’s on Bahryn; one that seemed to shroud even the most heartless and desolate of places.

He knew from experience if he clutched the meteor too hard or too carelessly, it could draw blood. This time, though, Kallus’ touch was not hard, but delicate. Kallus was no longer looking to hurt or punish or forcefully contain burdening emotion… But to heal. Kallus traced it’s naturally serrated edge. His finger was a pendulum, experiencing blunt and then sharp and then blunt again…

All was silent bar the background humming of the ship and the steady, slow, beating of his heart. And he listened. Breathed. This was it, his choice, and he chose to embrace this meteor and all it’s edges, accept all that it meant, all that came with it. Accept himself as Fulcrum and the new life ahead of him.

A new spark of hope had ignited within him. Not for himself, his own future, but for the Rebellion. The Galaxy. Because Kallus could make a difference. Even if all this ended with him being caught by Thrawn, and executed for treason, Kallus could still make some small difference. ‘Fulcrum’ was the path he’d decided to proceed down. It felt right; overwhelming, but _right._ Whilst that spark was aflame, whilst he had a choice and a chance, Kallus would not allow fleeting emotions like fear to put a halt to grander things. His own life, in the scale of things, had been deemed more than unimportant; he had wasted it fighting for the wrong side, and so he would die fighting for the right one, if that’s what it came to. Kallus would not let anything reduce him to a mess of nothingness, he would not sleep, would not eat, would not yield until he’d helped until he could help no more.

This was the promise Kallus made to himself when Ahsoka contacted him, gave him the means to contact Base One as well as the Ghost Crew and become a Fulcrum spy for the Rebellion. It was the promise he’d repeated in his mind in this moment. It was the promise the meteor and the string around his neck would represent and remind him of. Each day it would lay hidden, not in a box of dust and past times, but beneath tainted uniform, against his chest, heart.

Somehow, Ahsoka had been aware of Kallus’ revelation.

Something had changed; a shift in the force, an unexpected twist in the fate of the Galaxy was upon the horizon, she’d said… And Kallus had explained to her how Zeb had been his catalyst. Kallus would not understand her words for years to come, no one would. What mattered though, was not her words, but Kallus’ actions that would follow them. It was up to him.

Kallus had never sought glory and power, it’s why he’d denied promotions in order to stay a field agent; the position in which he could best serve the Empire. He sought to do what he believed honorable. Kallus could live knowing he didn’t matter here if he was doing the right thing. Live with being a cog in a machine if it were for the greater good. But now Kallus had _seen_ ; this path he’d been striding down was far from the just, and ethical one. This clarity was almost devastating; a crushing guilt had consumed him until there was nothing but emptiness. Then, like a convor offering morning songs of joyous melody, Ahsoka had given Kallus something soul filling. A chance to one day meet Zeb again, and as someone on his side. A choice. Given him noble purpose. Without this, Kallus could not bear to imagine how he would’ve survived.

Absolution was not within his reach, Kallus knew this. For someone like him, it surely never could be. But perhaps a milder form of amnesty was, and Kallus would fight with all his strength to earn it.

**


End file.
